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This problem of 'triggering' and 'safe places' has been something I've recently become acutely aware of. It seems to have strong ties with the 'Social Justice W

This problem of 'triggering' and 'safe places' has been something I've recently become acutely aware of. It seems to have strong ties with the 'Social Justice Warrior' and I can't help but feel it is detrimental to a liberal and free, loving and open society, despite trying to champion it. I call it oversensitivity, Fry calls it infantile. I don't disagree with him. It's a childlike lack of acceptance of the world, followed by an attempt to shape the world into something they are content with, displaying childlike reactions when the world doesn't heed to their demands. Unfortunately this behaviour supported by a community of people who also behave the same way, or at least, feeling a moral sentiment behind the actions of the other, support them believing their actions are noble. If you pretend rape, race, homosexuality, transgenderism etc don't exist by not allowing these words to be spoken, or acts and circumstances to be portrayed, you create the environment for these facts of life to rot in the mind of society. It's healthy for us to talk in society, just as it's healthy for individuals to talk about their issues - it's unhealthy to pretend they don't exist.

makomk 11y ago
Quite. For example, recently a student's union refused to let Julie Bindel speak there because of her successful campaign to deny trans women access to rape and domestic violence services. How childish! Instead, they should have let the proposed debate about whether her evil opponents who just wanted to censor her for no reason were representative of feminism as a whole or not go ahead. Of course, the press didn't bother to mention these details, just like they never covered the very special exemption added to UK anti-discrimination law to allow this and how exactly it got there, but obviously it's the students who are pretending these issues don't exist. (This was, incidentally, one of the highest profile instances of UK students' supposed infantalisation and refusal to accept the real world exists.)
- lucozade 11y ago
  Disagreeing with her isn't infantile. Opposing her isn't infantile. It may even not be infantile to prevent her from speaking. YMMV. But, as you point out, the effect is that those who would have heard her are now relying on mainstream media for an interpretation of her views. All of a sudden she is a victim and a champion of the repressed. So maybe not infantile but, at the very least, naive.
  - makomk 11y ago
    The students wrote an announcement explaining why she wasn't welcome. Didn't matter. Many of the people who were supposedly "silencing" her and all the rest actually linked to their views and encouraged people to read them; I know there was a copy of Bindel's articles kicking around the LGBT society when I was a student for that reason. Didn't stop the press from spinning it as an attempt to silence them and prevent people hearing their views whilst making sure not to inform readers what those views are. I fail to see how letting Bindel spin herself as a victim and a champion of the repressed in person, at an event set up with an opponent who was on the same side as her on this, would do anything to stop this. (I think someone did manage to debate Bindel on trans rights and trounce her a few years back, after which she went back to her Guardian column and penned an attack on them which reached a much broader audience than anything in the debate. Not a useful tactic.)
    - lucozade 11y ago
      > I fail to see how letting Bindel spin ... would do anything to stop this But that's the thing though. By not letting her speak this turned from an issue on trans-gender rights, for which Bindel is extreme in a way that doesn't endear her to anyone much, to an issue of freedom of expression. Now, not coincidentally, freedom of expression is a subject that an awful lot of media editors are going to give an awful lot of air time to. And they're all going to be on her side. And they're all going to avoid going into detail on what she was banned for because it detracts from their argument. Saying that they explained their reasoning is a bit like yelling over your shoulder why the goal should have been disallowed as you take your ball home. It might make you feel more justified but it'll hardly improve the perception of maturity.
- DanBC 11y ago
  > Julie Bindel speak there because of her successful campaign to deny trans women access to rape and domestic violence services. [...] > just like they never covered the very special exemption added to UK anti-discrimination law to allow this and how exactly it got there, Rape and domestic violence centres have always been given exclusions in discrimination law, from the 1970s sex discrimination act through all the statutory instruments and duties (eg Gender Equality Duty). But that's not a blanket right to exclude trans-people - a SARC can not just say "no trans people". The exclusion has to be a proportionate response to achieve something reasonable. The Code of Practice for the act is very clear: >> “Service providers should be aware that where a transsexual person is visually and for all practical purposes indistinguishable from a non-transsexual person of that gender, they should normally be treated according to their acquired gender, unless there are strong reasons to the contrary. >> As stated at the beginning of this chapter, any exception to the prohibition of discrimination must be applied as restrictively as possible and the denial of a service to a transsexual person should only occur in exceptional circumstances.” But most SARCs do not exclude men or transpeople, many on this list specifically mention that men can be the victims of rape and sexual assault and that men are able to use the services. http://thesurvivorstrust.org/sarc/ http://thesurvivorstrust.org/sarc/ The real problem is the tiny number of SARCs available - if more were available some could specialise on services for transpeople, on services for men, and services for women.
  - makomk 11y ago
    I'm not sure how legal it is to set up a service in the UK that only serves trans people - the legal exemption in question is at least partly one-way. It's definitely not legal to prefer to hire trans women on the basis that other trans women are more likely to be comfortable speaking to them, because the exemption allowing rape counseling services to only hire cis women for the same reason very definitely and specifically does not apply in the other direction. (Requiring that they at least think of trans women as women is probably legal and hopefully wouldn't fall foul of the indirect discrimination provision, maybe.) Also, that Code of Practice is the result of a change of government and a fairly intensive lobbying campaign by trans activists to reduce the damage done by the exemption. It was originally intended to be much broader in application. From the original explanatory notes: "A group counselling session is provided for female victims of sexual assault. The organisers do not allow transsexual people to attend as they judge that the clients who attend the group session are unlikely to do so if a male-to-female transsexual person was also there. This would be lawful." That is, originally it was intended to allow rape and domestic violence services to exclude all trans women as a class because they believe that some cis women wouldn't want to attend if they were there. This is a common belief amongst a certain group of vocal feminist activists who think trans women are men and run government-funded services. Note that there's no requirement that clients are actually unwilling to attend, just that the organizers think they would be. I think they also intended this to apply this to one-on-one counseling on the basis that women would have to share a waiting room. This was also a rollback in protection for some trans women, because the law on Gender Recognition Certificates didn't permit this. Any future Governemnt can trivially change the Code of Practice back too; don't think it'd even require a vote in Parliament. (The reason trans people got added to anti-discrimination law at all is because the European Court of Human Rights ruled they had to be. There was some pretty impressive foot-dragging on implementing that too.)
rmc 11y ago
"safe spaces" are not about pretending that "homosexuality doesn't exist", it's about telling people that saying "faggots are mentally ill perverts" is unacceptable for the environment.
- sooheon 11y ago
  Two hypothetical extremes. Yet the very real actual example in the submission "safe space" was an excuse to try to have a participant thrown out for throwing up her hands and shaking her head in a debate. No extreme slur against homosexuality, just a gesture.
  - rmc 11y ago
    "Gay & transpeople people are ill and/or preverts" is not an extreme. There are a great many people and politicians who make those claims today. Just look at North Carolinas' new law.
- DanBC 11y ago
  That's what they should be about. They're being misused. If Peter Tatchell (a prominent campaigner for LGBT rights) or Germaine Greer risk being no-platformed that's a pretty clear sign the concept is being misused.
  - rmc 11y ago
    What happened was someone didn't want to debate with Peter Tatchell, and declined an invite to an event. That's the extend of "no platforming". That's nonsense. Should everyone be required to attend any event regardless of the conditions?
dalke 11y ago
A lot of people think it's important that people warn about potential spoilers. (SPOILERS: Vader is Luke's father, and Bruce Willis' character in "The Sixth Sense" is actually dead.) Aren't spoiler free zones a form of safe space, and the word "SPOILER" itself a trigger warning? A friend in the Army told me about one of the training exercises which simulates a car roll. Some people who have been in a car roll get a panic attack if they go through the simulation. The instructor said that if anyone had been in a roll and felt that way then they would be excused from the exercise. I suffer from acrophobia. I would like some warning that the hotel I'm going to stay in (Hyatt Regency San Francisco, I'm looking at you) has a large open atrium and glass elevator for my room on the 8th floor. Do you think these are childish and oversensitive reactions? Perhaps. But if so, why call out "Social Justice Warriors" as being unique? If not, what's the difference? The point isn't that plot twists, car rollovers, and glass elevators don't exist, nor that rape, race, homosexuality, etc. don't exist. It's that some people have been raped, and talking about rape unexpected may lead to unexpected emotional reactions. Now that I think about it, a few years after 9/11 I was in Sweden taking a Swedish course. It was a 9/11, so the teacher thought it would be an interesting topic for the class. Completely out of the blue, I started thinking about what happened again, and broke out crying. And it's not like I had a close connection to NYC or any of the people involved. I figure if a reaction like that can happen to me, then I can well see how others would be more strongly affected by more personally directed trauma. Nor was it something I wanted to talk about more at that point. The teacher quickly switched to a different topic, since the goal wasn't to talk about 9/11 but to learn Swedish. It certainly doesn't mean that I want to pretend that 9/11 didn't exist, so I don't think you can make the conclusion you did. Again, you might say that I'm oversensitive or childish. Shrug At some point how do you know you aren't sensitive enough? Don't take that to mean that I require warning before anyone talks about 9/11, or that there be some sort of "safe space" for me. I am neither proposing that nor defending it, only arguing against the validity of your proposition that people want safe spaces and trigger warnings as a way to "pretend rape, race, homosexuality, transgenderism etc don't exist by not allowing these words to be spoken, or acts and circumstances to be portrayed, [and thereby] create the environment for these facts of life to rot in the mind of society."
- edraferi 11y ago
DanBC 11y ago
Here's an open letter signed by many people involved in "SJW" stuff that strongly criticises the no-platforming happening in the UK. https://gendertrender.wordpress.com/2015/02/14/the-guardian-letter-we-cannot-allow-censorship-and-silencing-of-individuals/ https://gendertrender.wordpress.com/2015/02/14/the-guardian-...
urmish 11y ago
It is an outcome of 'liberal and free' society, not detrimental to it.
- marrs 11y ago
  It is? How can something illiberal and constraining be an outcome of it?

makomk 11y ago

Quite. For example, recently a student's union refused to let Julie Bindel speak there because of her successful campaign to deny trans women access to rape and domestic violence services. How childish! Instead, they should have let the proposed debate about whether her evil opponents who just wanted to censor her for no reason were representative of feminism as a whole or not go ahead. Of course, the press didn't bother to mention these details, just like they never covered the very special exemption added to UK anti-discrimination law to allow this and how exactly it got there, but obviously it's the students who are pretending these issues don't exist. (This was, incidentally, one of the highest profile instances of UK students' supposed infantalisation and refusal to accept the real world exists.)

lucozade 11y ago
Disagreeing with her isn't infantile. Opposing her isn't infantile. It may even not be infantile to prevent her from speaking. YMMV. But, as you point out, the effect is that those who would have heard her are now relying on mainstream media for an interpretation of her views. All of a sudden she is a victim and a champion of the repressed. So maybe not infantile but, at the very least, naive.
- makomk 11y ago
  The students wrote an announcement explaining why she wasn't welcome. Didn't matter. Many of the people who were supposedly "silencing" her and all the rest actually linked to their views and encouraged people to read them; I know there was a copy of Bindel's articles kicking around the LGBT society when I was a student for that reason. Didn't stop the press from spinning it as an attempt to silence them and prevent people hearing their views whilst making sure not to inform readers what those views are. I fail to see how letting Bindel spin herself as a victim and a champion of the repressed in person, at an event set up with an opponent who was on the same side as her on this, would do anything to stop this. (I think someone did manage to debate Bindel on trans rights and trounce her a few years back, after which she went back to her Guardian column and penned an attack on them which reached a much broader audience than anything in the debate. Not a useful tactic.)
  - lucozade 11y ago
    > I fail to see how letting Bindel spin ... would do anything to stop this But that's the thing though. By not letting her speak this turned from an issue on trans-gender rights, for which Bindel is extreme in a way that doesn't endear her to anyone much, to an issue of freedom of expression. Now, not coincidentally, freedom of expression is a subject that an awful lot of media editors are going to give an awful lot of air time to. And they're all going to be on her side. And they're all going to avoid going into detail on what she was banned for because it detracts from their argument. Saying that they explained their reasoning is a bit like yelling over your shoulder why the goal should have been disallowed as you take your ball home. It might make you feel more justified but it'll hardly improve the perception of maturity.
DanBC 11y ago
> Julie Bindel speak there because of her successful campaign to deny trans women access to rape and domestic violence services. [...] > just like they never covered the very special exemption added to UK anti-discrimination law to allow this and how exactly it got there, Rape and domestic violence centres have always been given exclusions in discrimination law, from the 1970s sex discrimination act through all the statutory instruments and duties (eg Gender Equality Duty). But that's not a blanket right to exclude trans-people - a SARC can not just say "no trans people". The exclusion has to be a proportionate response to achieve something reasonable. The Code of Practice for the act is very clear: >> “Service providers should be aware that where a transsexual person is visually and for all practical purposes indistinguishable from a non-transsexual person of that gender, they should normally be treated according to their acquired gender, unless there are strong reasons to the contrary. >> As stated at the beginning of this chapter, any exception to the prohibition of discrimination must be applied as restrictively as possible and the denial of a service to a transsexual person should only occur in exceptional circumstances.” But most SARCs do not exclude men or transpeople, many on this list specifically mention that men can be the victims of rape and sexual assault and that men are able to use the services. http://thesurvivorstrust.org/sarc/ http://thesurvivorstrust.org/sarc/ The real problem is the tiny number of SARCs available - if more were available some could specialise on services for transpeople, on services for men, and services for women.
- makomk 11y ago
  I'm not sure how legal it is to set up a service in the UK that only serves trans people - the legal exemption in question is at least partly one-way. It's definitely not legal to prefer to hire trans women on the basis that other trans women are more likely to be comfortable speaking to them, because the exemption allowing rape counseling services to only hire cis women for the same reason very definitely and specifically does not apply in the other direction. (Requiring that they at least think of trans women as women is probably legal and hopefully wouldn't fall foul of the indirect discrimination provision, maybe.) Also, that Code of Practice is the result of a change of government and a fairly intensive lobbying campaign by trans activists to reduce the damage done by the exemption. It was originally intended to be much broader in application. From the original explanatory notes: "A group counselling session is provided for female victims of sexual assault. The organisers do not allow transsexual people to attend as they judge that the clients who attend the group session are unlikely to do so if a male-to-female transsexual person was also there. This would be lawful." That is, originally it was intended to allow rape and domestic violence services to exclude all trans women as a class because they believe that some cis women wouldn't want to attend if they were there. This is a common belief amongst a certain group of vocal feminist activists who think trans women are men and run government-funded services. Note that there's no requirement that clients are actually unwilling to attend, just that the organizers think they would be. I think they also intended this to apply this to one-on-one counseling on the basis that women would have to share a waiting room. This was also a rollback in protection for some trans women, because the law on Gender Recognition Certificates didn't permit this. Any future Governemnt can trivially change the Code of Practice back too; don't think it'd even require a vote in Parliament. (The reason trans people got added to anti-discrimination law at all is because the European Court of Human Rights ruled they had to be. There was some pretty impressive foot-dragging on implementing that too.)

rmc 11y ago

"safe spaces" are not about pretending that "homosexuality doesn't exist", it's about telling people that saying "faggots are mentally ill perverts" is unacceptable for the environment.

sooheon 11y ago
Two hypothetical extremes. Yet the very real actual example in the submission "safe space" was an excuse to try to have a participant thrown out for throwing up her hands and shaking her head in a debate. No extreme slur against homosexuality, just a gesture.
- rmc 11y ago
  "Gay & transpeople people are ill and/or preverts" is not an extreme. There are a great many people and politicians who make those claims today. Just look at North Carolinas' new law.
DanBC 11y ago
That's what they should be about. They're being misused. If Peter Tatchell (a prominent campaigner for LGBT rights) or Germaine Greer risk being no-platformed that's a pretty clear sign the concept is being misused.
- rmc 11y ago
  What happened was someone didn't want to debate with Peter Tatchell, and declined an invite to an event. That's the extend of "no platforming". That's nonsense. Should everyone be required to attend any event regardless of the conditions?

dalke 11y ago

A lot of people think it's important that people warn about potential spoilers. (SPOILERS: Vader is Luke's father, and Bruce Willis' character in "The Sixth Sense" is actually dead.) Aren't spoiler free zones a form of safe space, and the word "SPOILER" itself a trigger warning? A friend in the Army told me about one of the training exercises which simulates a car roll. Some people who have been in a car roll get a panic attack if they go through the simulation. The instructor said that if anyone had been in a roll and felt that way then they would be excused from the exercise. I suffer from acrophobia. I would like some warning that the hotel I'm going to stay in (Hyatt Regency San Francisco, I'm looking at you) has a large open atrium and glass elevator for my room on the 8th floor. Do you think these are childish and oversensitive reactions? Perhaps. But if so, why call out "Social Justice Warriors" as being unique? If not, what's the difference? The point isn't that plot twists, car rollovers, and glass elevators don't exist, nor that rape, race, homosexuality, etc. don't exist. It's that some people have been raped, and talking about rape unexpected may lead to unexpected emotional reactions. Now that I think about it, a few years after 9/11 I was in Sweden taking a Swedish course. It was a 9/11, so the teacher thought it would be an interesting topic for the class. Completely out of the blue, I started thinking about what happened again, and broke out crying. And it's not like I had a close connection to NYC or any of the people involved. I figure if a reaction like that can happen to me, then I can well see how others would be more strongly affected by more personally directed trauma. Nor was it something I wanted to talk about more at that point. The teacher quickly switched to a different topic, since the goal wasn't to talk about 9/11 but to learn Swedish. It certainly doesn't mean that I want to pretend that 9/11 didn't exist, so I don't think you can make the conclusion you did. Again, you might say that I'm oversensitive or childish. Shrug At some point how do you know you aren't sensitive enough? Don't take that to mean that I require warning before anyone talks about 9/11, or that there be some sort of "safe space" for me. I am neither proposing that nor defending it, only arguing against the validity of your proposition that people want safe spaces and trigger warnings as a way to "pretend rape, race, homosexuality, transgenderism etc don't exist by not allowing these words to be spoken, or acts and circumstances to be portrayed, [and thereby] create the environment for these facts of life to rot in the mind of society."

edraferi 11y ago

DanBC 11y ago

Here's an open letter signed by many people involved in "SJW" stuff that strongly criticises the no-platforming happening in the UK. https://gendertrender.wordpress.com/2015/02/14/the-guardian-letter-we-cannot-allow-censorship-and-silencing-of-individuals/ https://gendertrender.wordpress.com/2015/02/14/the-guardian-...

urmish 11y ago

It is an outcome of 'liberal and free' society, not detrimental to it.

marrs 11y ago
It is? How can something illiberal and constraining be an outcome of it?